Abraham Lincoln: life, ideas and books

Life

Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky and grew up on the Indiana and Illinois frontier with little formal schooling. He taught himself law and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836. He served four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives and one term in the U.S. House from 1847 to 1849.

He joined the new Republican Party in 1856 and in 1858 lost a Senate race to Stephen A. Douglas, though their seven debates made him a national figure. Elected president in 1860, he led the country through the Civil War from 1861 to 1865. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, delivered the Gettysburg Address that November, won re-election in 1864 and pressed for the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.

Ideas

Lincoln's central conviction was that the nation was founded on the Declaration of Independence's principle that all men are created equal, and that slavery contradicted it. He opposed the extension of slavery into new territories, warned in 1858 that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and held that the Union was perpetual and secession unlawful. He argued that self-government depends on respect for law, and in the Lyceum Address he warned against mob rule.

In economic policy he favoured internal improvements, banking and a protective tariff. In the Second Inaugural Address he called the country to reconciliation "with malice toward none" and framed the war in moral and religious terms.

Major works

• Lyceum Address (1838).
• Peoria Speech (1854).
• "House Divided" Speech (1858).
• Cooper Union Address (1860).
• Gettysburg Address (1863).
• Second Inaugural Address (1865).

Why conservatives read him

Lincoln is the first Republican president and a central figure in the party's identity. Conservatives read him for the argument that constitutional order and the Declaration's principles belong together, and for his example of prudent statesmanship in a national crisis. His speeches are standard texts on equality, the rule of law and the preservation of the Union, and they continue to anchor debates about the meaning of the founding.